Profile

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also an adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University and senior director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship and a Fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1981 and 2000, respectively. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award in Education. In recognition of his contributions to both academic theory and public policy, he has received honorary degrees from thirty-one colleges and universities, including institutions in Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, South Korea, and Spain. He has twice been selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. In 2011, Gardner received the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, and in 2015, he was chosen as the recipient of the Brock International Prize in Education. He has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education, and the London-based Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. He serves on a number of boards, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the American Philosophical Society.

The author of thirty books translated into thirty-two languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments (please see multipleintelligencesoasis.org). Since the middle 1990s, Gardner has directed The Good Project, a group of initiatives, founded in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, that promotes excellence, engagement, and ethics in education, preparing students to become good workers and good citizens who contribute to the overall well-being of society. Through research-based concepts, frameworks, and resources, the Project seeks to help students reflect upon the ethical dilemmas that arise in everyday life and give them the tools to make thoughtful decisions.

His newest research undertaking is a large-scale national study documenting how different groups think about the goals of college and the value of a course of study emphasizing liberal arts and sciences. The study seeks to understand how the chief constituencies on campuses (incoming students, graduating students, faculty, senior administrators, parents, alumni/ae, trustees and job recruiters) think about these changes and how they may impact the college experience in our time. Ultimately, the study aims to provide valuable suggestions of how best to provide quality, non-professional higher education in the 21st century.

Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzu Centre,(2001)

Guggenheim Fellowship,(2000)

Grawemeyer Award in Education,(1990)

MacArthur Prize Fellowship,(1981)

Sponsored Projects

An Investigation of Impact: Educational Experience at United World Colleges (2017-2021) The United World Colleges

The proposed four-year research project is a collaboration between United World Colleges (UWC) and The Good Project at Project Zero. UWC is a network of seventeen schools, located in countries around the world, emphasizing a shared philosophy of diversity, sustainability, and peace. The project team will investigate the holistic impact of UWCs educational experience on two subject groups: a cohort of current students, followed across their junior and senior years at participating sites; and groups of alumni at 5, 15, and 25 years post-graduation. The Good Project will develop instruments, which are anticipated to be survey and interview protocols, that will be used to collect data from these subjects. Data collection will occur in partnership with UWC institutions and involve both remote and limited on-site activities. All seventeen UWC member schools are expected to participate in this project. Control group sites, which will consist of comparable secondary schools, will be selected for participation in this study as well. Data will then be analyzed and coded for themes, and findings will be reported. The results will inform UWCs practices and those of the wider field.

The Family Dinner Project (2017-2018) Poses Foundation

Research demonstrates that family mealtimes are a strong predictor of positive physical, social, emotional and academic outcomes for children and their families. Building on research about the why of family dinners, The Family Dinner Project is the how of family dinners, offering tools and resources to help families improve the quantity and quality of their dinners together. FDP works with families through in-person workshops and community events with parents and families, as well as online through the FDP website (www.thefamilydinnerproject.org). The programs goal is to inspire real and lasting behavior change in families.
This initiative is actively supported by research. It will draw upon current literature on family dinners and evaluate current tools and methods. Major project activities will include: 1) spreading the message of The Family Dinner Project through programs, networks and partnerships, 2) offering materials, tools, organizing efforts to help families and groups to improve the quantity and quality of their family meals and 3) continuing to assess, refine, and improve these tools and initiatives.
The FDP will increase its impact via programs and connections that have large audiences like pediatricians, museums, businesses, other strategic collaborations and publicity, building our online presence and outreach opportunities. In addition to our standard assessment work, progress on these goals will help us understand how well were engaging families in activities that lead to behavior change. Via large-scale conferences and other opportunities we will deliver current materials, develop new tools, and access their quality and impact.

Liberal Arts and Sciences in the 21st Century (2017-2019)Andrew Mellon Foundation

The United States has long been a leader in four-year higher education  an approach that surveys knowledge broadly, encourages in-depth study in at least one discipline, and is not primarily vocational training. This form of education has been admired globally and is increasingly emulated in other nations. Yet in recent years, the value of education in the liberal arts and sciences (hereafter, liberal arts) has been questioned and, indeed, challenged by a number of factors, including rising costs, hyper-vocationalism, various forms of online education, and numerous social
tensions.
Over the years there have been numerous eloquent defenses of education in the liberal arts. While appreciative of and drawing on these accounts, we came to believe that there is a compelling need to understand better (empirically) how those most involved in higher education today conceive of this valued yet threatened form. Accordingly, in the summer of 2013, we launched a national project called Liberal Arts and Sciences in the 21st Century (hereafter LAS21).
Through this empirical research project, we study in-depth the perspectives of major stakeholders at a diverse group of campuses with respect to the nature, challenges, and value of higher education at this time. Specifically, through hour-long, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with individuals on and off campus, we look for areas of alignment and misalignment among stakeholders with respect to a variety of issues  among them curricula, pedagogy, strengths and problems of
campus life, as well as the overall value, values, and purposes of higher education. We analyze these data through a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods. Ultimately, these carefully analyzed data will form the basis for recommendations about how higher education in the liberal arts and sciences should be rethought and, as necessary, reinvented for the 21st century.
The project has two overarching aims:
1) Within the community of higher education (including leaders and researchers), we will present  in de-identified form  findings from what may well be the most ambitious contemporary effort to describe the mental models of several different constituencies on at least ten campuses. This information, which complements other classical and ongoing studies of higher education, should prove valuable to those who are charged with understanding and improving higher education today.
2) For the broader national and international communities, we will present our findings in accessible form. In addition, we will make data-based recommendations on how to preserve the traditional purposes and strengths of liberal arts education, while also strengthening and, insofar as advisable, transforming this form of education so that it is appropriate and robust for our time. We will use appropriate language, concepts, and media to reach the widest possible audience.

In Year 4, the Good Participation team will produce and present additional papers reporting findings from data collection carried out in 2014-15. These papers explore themes related to the quality of participatory practices and, importantly, the educational implications of this research.
Additional funds will be used to contribute further to the networks impact agenda, specifically with regard to educating for participatory politics. In collaboration with other network teams, we aim to develop and disseminate tools and materials from the network that are usable to educators in their practice. As appropriate, we will develop proposals for further funding to support this agenda.

Aligned Programs for Liberal Arts and Sciences in the 21st Century (2014-2017) Teagle Foundation

The Aligned Programs for the 21st Century (ALPS21) is part of a larger empirical study, featuring in-depth interviews of the major stakeholders in contemporary liberal arts education in the United States. The larger study (Liberal Arts and Sciences in the 21st Century) seeks to discover the predominant mental models of each of the groups of stakeholders, as well as alignments and misalignments in goals, values, and educational approaches across the various stakeholders.
In the study proposed here, we seek to identify exemplary programs  courses, formats, co-curricular activities, etc.  that help to increase alignment among the conceptions and aspirations of key constituencies. (As one example of an area where better alignment is apparently needed, students and parents are understandably concerned about immediate employment opportunities, while faculty typically valorize the development of powerful analytic and expressive skills). On the basis of our detailed study, we provide rich descriptions of these programs; how and why they were developed; what lessons were learned and adaptations made along the way; and the ways in which these programs have been formally and informally evaluated. Most crucially, we attend key professional meetings and host on-site meetings where we will offer specific recommendations about how lessons from these programs can be drawn on by (or transferred to) other individuals, programs, and institutions that seek to offer appropriate quality liberal arts education in the years ahead.

Liberal arts and sciences education at the college level, long practiced and valued in the United States, faces a historic challenge. It is admired and emulated in much of the world for its combination of depth and breadth and its claim to nurture good citizens and good leaders. Families are willing to sacrifice so that their children can attend an institution of higher education. And yet this form of education is being challenged by powerful new forces such as escalating costs, MOOCs, and hyper-vocationalism, as well as by harsh critiques of both student and faculty behavior. Dating back to the nineteenth century, and indeed to classical times, and in the recent writings of college leaders, we have numerous eloquent defenses of the liberal arts and sciences. What we now need are rigorous, data-based approaches that can help this valuable form of education to survive, to thrive under dramatically changed circumstances, and to become available to an ever broadening group of students.
Our research team from the Harvard Graduate School of Education has launched an ambitious project, aimed at preserving the heart of a liberal arts and science education while rethinking and, as necessary, reinventing it to be adequate and appropriate for our times. The study begins with interviews of the major constituencies across campuses (incoming students, graduating students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and job recruiters). The models of higher education that emerge from these several key constituencies promise to reveal the extent to which there is alignment or misalignment among them with respect to the goals, values, and means of implementing post-secondary education. As one example: Researchers probe what students think is the purpose of a college education and to what extent their views align with those of the faculty, administration, and other key stakeholders.
The project is studying the several constituencies across a diverse group of campuses that value liberal arts and sciences. By the end of the national study, we expect to have studied in-depth at least ten campuses, which differ in size, location, student population, and academic goals. We will also create a survey that can be disseminated online; this instrument will allow the accumulation of data from a wide variety of campuses, including ones outside of the United States.
When completed, the study will provide an unprecedented view of similarities and differences within and across campuses, and within and across constituencies. Findings from the study will be made available to the schools being studied; on a de-identified basis, findings will also be reported to the scholarly community and to the general public. As part of a linked effort (ALPS21Aligned Programs in the Liberal Arts and Sciences), the research team will also highlight flagship programs and approaches which have demonstrable effectiveness and which help to reconcile the disparate views of the methods and goals of higher education. Ultimately the project will develop both general and targeted recommendations, host conferences, issue various publications, and have an active online and social media presence.

Gardner, H., Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Damon, W. Good Work: When excellence and ethics meet. New York: Basic Books. Paperback edition with Afterword (2002). Translated into Korean, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese and Romanian. Selected as one of ten most important books in Hong Kong (2003). Chosen as a Book of Distinction by the Templeton Foundation.,(2001)

Gardner, H. Art education and human development. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts. Translated into Italian and Spanish.,(1990)

Gardner, H. To open minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Basic Books Paperback with new introduction, 1991. Translated into Italian and Korean.,(1989)

Gardner, H. The mind's new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books. Translated into Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Portuguese. Adopted by six book clubs. Basic Books Paperback with new Epilogue, 1987.,(1985)